Physical Education, August 17, 2009
Comment from JAK: I appreciate your flexibility. I think that of the four original SIP goals, interdisciplinary work is probably the area in which we have made the least amount of progress. Your willingness to accomodate other departments in order to work together will help here. Science has put together a list (in their August 17th report) of possibility interdisciplinary ideas; you may want to take a look at that list and reach out to them if some of those ideas seem feasible. Mapping will certianly help with this, in theory at least, because the entire curriculum can be viewed (in several different ways) by anyone, so interdiscipinary opporunities to come to the fore more obviously than when we simply had to have the fluke conversation in the faculty lounge with another faculty member doing something in their class that might work with ours. I encourage your to look at the maps of courses, or search the maps, to identify places where PE and other departments might work together! Using the map to look at the transitions in your own department is great! You may want to examine the way that you map skills in thei light--for example, in grades 6 through 8, units seem to repeat with no elevation in skills at each grade level. If that is accurate, you should leave it that way, but if skills do develop furhter in each grade level, you may want to make a note of that. That is precisely one of the reasons that we are mapping. A final point, you note that you ethics makes its way into your curriculum on a regular basis. But, when I do a search of PE maps, no variation of "ethic" appears in any of your maps (granted, you talk about "personal and social behavior" a lot). So, just a thought, do you want to make it a point to include "ethics" or "ethical decision making" or "ethical behavior" or something of the like in your maps where appropriate? At grade level meeting and in some other departments, there seems to be a concern with "ethical behavior," so perhaps if we tend to use a common language we could look at how and if and how well we are talking to students about ethical decisions more effectively. Please read, I am not telling you that you must do this. But, as you continue to develop and modify your maps over time, it might be something to consider.
Physical Education, Oct 7, 2009
Physical Education, August 17, 2009
Comment from JAK: I appreciate your flexibility. I think that of the four original SIP goals, interdisciplinary work is probably the area in which we have made the least amount of progress. Your willingness to accomodate other departments in order to work together will help here. Science has put together a list (in their August 17th report) of possibility interdisciplinary ideas; you may want to take a look at that list and reach out to them if some of those ideas seem feasible. Mapping will certianly help with this, in theory at least, because the entire curriculum can be viewed (in several different ways) by anyone, so interdiscipinary opporunities to come to the fore more obviously than when we simply had to have the fluke conversation in the faculty lounge with another faculty member doing something in their class that might work with ours. I encourage your to look at the maps of courses, or search the maps, to identify places where PE and other departments might work together! Using the map to look at the transitions in your own department is great! You may want to examine the way that you map skills in thei light--for example, in grades 6 through 8, units seem to repeat with no elevation in skills at each grade level. If that is accurate, you should leave it that way, but if skills do develop furhter in each grade level, you may want to make a note of that. That is precisely one of the reasons that we are mapping. A final point, you note that you ethics makes its way into your curriculum on a regular basis. But, when I do a search of PE maps, no variation of "ethic" appears in any of your maps (granted, you talk about "personal and social behavior" a lot). So, just a thought, do you want to make it a point to include "ethics" or "ethical decision making" or "ethical behavior" or something of the like in your maps where appropriate? At grade level meeting and in some other departments, there seems to be a concern with "ethical behavior," so perhaps if we tend to use a common language we could look at how and if and how well we are talking to students about ethical decisions more effectively. Please read, I am not telling you that you must do this. But, as you continue to develop and modify your maps over time, it might be something to consider.